Austinites outraged as Google Fiber tears up Texas capital Residents of Austin, TX may be regretting the decision to bring Google Fiber to the city. The Austin American Statesman says that last year, 254 complaints were filed with the city over problems related to construction of the network. The complaints include reports of landscape and property damage caused by crews tasked with …
Which one, in the local paper or here? If the article here is simply relating what the local paper is documenting, wha'chr'beef? I think you'll agree ElReg goes to no end to relate how unhappy the network incumbents make people, so there's the balance you seek, just not repeated here.
Aside: got taken to see a sight south of Austin. A railroad bridge, with the tracks about 40-45 feet over the normal level of the river. Noticed something that looked strange, yet couldn't recognize the significance for awhile. Then it clicked that it was water-borne brush wrapped around the top of the bridge pillars, at track height. Not like this was a narrow gorge either, but a quite broad area for the river. And this was the second flood last year, higher than the first. Which is why they now are going to have to replace both the concrete road bridge washed out in the spring and now the roads _to_ the crossing washed away on either side in the fall.
El Niño's bladder is really *really* large, and when he pisses in your direction...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/srhodes/3958248844
I took a friend there and pointed out the poles, and asked if he could guess what they are for.
Nope.
The river gets higher sometimes. The moorings need to adjust....
It's the Severn between Tewkesbury and Gloucester and still builders want to develop the flood plains.
At least downtown Austin is kind of used to this. First, during the 80's boom dot bust, everyone, including their long-lost relatives were digging up downtown to lay fiber and cable because the permit process was, apparently, merely announcing: I'm digging here and then doing it. [on the flip side, it took ages and ages for the first sidewalk cafe permit to go thru...] At any rate, there should be tons of dark fiber down there. Austin bounced back quickly from the bust and next there was monumental construction downtown (which hasn't shown any sign of slowing none in the past 10-15 years). And of course, this made the wholely antiquated infrastructure impossible so, basically, downtown had to be dug up once more. Somewhere around this time, we thought, hey, what the heck. Let's just put a ginormous tunnel under Waller Creek downtown while we're at it, ya know, fer flood control (and the attendent property values rise). While the infrastructure is pretty much done and the tunnel completion is in sight, construction goes on apace with more towering hotels and condos. Even the Convention Center is mulling another expansion. So, yep. I'd say we're kinda use to it here. If fact, it seems normal now. Austin: City of Cranes.
12 inches of rain in a single day - a record. And the residents, failing to read their own "Running Water Drive" street signs, neglected to purchase flood insurance. Caught in peril of paying for their own negligence they cast about for a scapegoat. The paperboy has no money, the mailman is protected by the federal government, so Google's contractor must be to blame somehow. Makes perfect sense. Except the part about it being news in the UK. Don't you guys have ample shenanigans like this of your own going on to report?
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I'm a long-term Austin citizen with Google Fiber partly installed (the fiber's not live yet, so they haven't brought the router out). While I see clues here and there that the subcontractors doing various legwork and digging are a bit detached from the smiley-face Google Fiber cheerleaders, they've been very helpful and personable for us.
My experience with Texans, Austinites, and particularly with my south side neighbors compels me to disclose that no-one loves a shark frenzy like this mob. You simply would not believe what kinds of things they whip into some sort of social or safety crisis. Picture a city packed solid with small-town busybodies. Once a target has been selected, everyone jumps in and tries to tear a hunk of flesh out for themselves. No-one is ever *for* anything; they're always just opposed to something.
Google Fiber is doing a fine job, though they do seem to be about 1-1.5 years behind schedule, heh. I credit the delay with them moving with necessary diligence. My only complaint is that they chose the deplorable "teleNetwork" call center to serve as their local customer service. I worked for them at one time.
@ TMMITW
I don't understand. I have just had fibre laid in our street in Auckland, NZ and I saw minimal trenching required.
They used horizontal drilling to lay the initial conduit for the main cable to run in, then when it came time to install that cable, they dug a hole every 30 or 40 metres (depending on bends v straight runs) broke open the conduit then pulled the cable through. Once done, the holes were filled in and any surface "decoration" replaced. By surface decoration I mean, grass, replacement flowers in a flower bed, etc.
When they came to run it to individual houses they had 2 separate (possibly more) crews, one who did shared/right-of-way access, and the other did the single houses.
With ours as a single house they put the linking cable through the same conduit as the copper phone lines. Simple.
The only trenching they did in our street was when running the cable down the shared driveways. They dug a small trench immediately adjacent to the driveway and if they were unable to do that in order to route around immovable objects, like trees for example, they would dig a VERY small trench to circumvent the obstruction, then cover everything when they had finished.
In very rare cases when all other access methods had failed, they can also attach to a fence or string it overhead if other services still used that method. Most cities and towns have underground service these days, so that too, is rare. A bit different in the countryside.
So the question is, just what are Google installers doing that requires such disruption and inconvenience?
The city government agencies were the main impediment to both speed of completion and good construction practices. Random city inspectors would come up with requirements out of thin air.
The population of Austin is also a problem. Far too many California transplants and other liberals. They will whine and pitch a fit about anything that offends their delicate sensibilities or intrudes on their soy-based vegan yoga chakra energy alignment or whatever they're attached to this week.
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